Samsung and LG Settle Agreement Over OLED Patent Dispute

04.02.2013

In the mobile business, the battle takes place on all fronts. Almost every month there is news about some company suing another over patent issues. Some law cases last for years, some are solved in a more “civilized way”. It seems to be the same case here. There is a scrap patent between LG and Samsung, companies which look like they reached an agreement in order to close the deal without any other legal action.

Yonhap, a Korean news agency, claims that the two major companies agreed to solve their issues over organic light-emitting diode (OLED) panel technologies “through dialogue” and not in the court room. The issue began in 2011 when Samsung Display had a suspicion that some of its own researches had given details of its OLED technology (which sustains the display system in devices such as tablets, smartphones, TVs and others), to one of its biggest competitors, LG Display.

Over the past few months both manufacturers threaten they would sue each other. The most recent events saw LG serve Samsung with a patent suit, while Samsung annulled some of LG’s patents in November 2012.

The conflict was taken to a new level in the second half of 2012 when LG asked for a court order against some of Samsung’s finest handsets which included the Galaxy S3, the Galaxy Tab 7.7 and the Galaxy Note. Before that, Samsung took legal action against LG accusing them that they had obtained details of 18 “confidential technologies”. Rumor has it that Samsung was planning to obtain almost 1 million US dollars in compensation for each technology.

On the other hand, LG denies every accusation that came from Samsung. When asked for an apology, LG threatened Samsung to sue for slander.